conquest and the grave of Caulaincourt. Presently
the cry, "It is the field of the great battle!" formed a long and
doleful murmur. The Emperor passed quickly. Nobody stopped. Cold,
hunger, and the enemy urged us on: we merely turned our faces as we
proceeded to take a last melancholy look at the vast grave of so many
companions in arms, uselessly sacrificed, and whom we were obliged to
leave behind.

It was here that we had inscribed with the sword and blood one of the
most memorable pages of our history. A few relics yet recorded it, and
they would soon be swept away. Some day the traveller will pass with
indifference over this plain, undistinguished from any other; but when
he shall learn that it was the theatre of the great battle, he will turn
back, long survey it with inquisitive looks, impress its minutest
features on his greedy memory, and doubtless exclaim, What men! what a
commander! what a destiny! These were the soldiers, who thirteen years
before in the south attempted a passage to the East, through Egypt, and
were dashed against its gates. They afterwards conquered Europe, and
hither they came by the north to present themselves again before that
same Asia, to be again foiled. What then urged them into this roving and
adventurous life? They were not barbarians, seeking a more genial
climate, more commodious habitations, more enchanting spectacles,
greater wealth: on the contrary, they possessed all these advantages,
and all possible pleasures; and yet they forsook them, to live without
shelter, and without food, to fall daily and in succession, either slain
or mutilated. What necessity drove them to this?--Why, what but
confidence in a leader hitherto infallible! the ambition to complete a
great work gloriously begun! the intoxication of victory, and above all,
that insatiable thirst of fame, that powerful instinct, which impels man
to seek death, in order to obtain immortality.

CHAP. VIII.

While the army was passing this fatal field in grave and silent
meditation, one of the victims of that sanguinary day was perceived, it
is said, still living, and piercing the air with his groans. It was
found by those who ran up to him that he was a French soldier. Both his
legs had been broken in the engagement; he had fallen among the dead,
where he remained unnoticed. The body of a horse, gutted by a shell, was
at first his asylum; afterwards, for fifty days, the muddy water of a
ravine, into which he h